The last few weeks have taken so much out of me, both physically and mentally. But, I don’t regret a second of it. I met so many great people this past week and I caught up with many people I haven’t seen since the last Shadowloo Showdown.

What is Shadowloo Showdown?

For those who don’t know what Shadowloo Showdown is; it is a major fighting game event that is held annually in Melbourne, Australia. SS2k12 featured such games as Super Street Fighter IV: AE2012, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Skullgirls, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, SoulCalibur V, Virtua Fighter V: Final Showdown, King of Fighters XIII and 3rd Strike Online. SS2k12 took place over the weekend of May 4th-6th at the CQ hotel on Queen St. We saw hundreds of fighters attend to see how they stack up against the worlds top fighters and spectators were walking through the door all weekend to check out the action.

At last years Shadowloo Showdown, we had the majority of the special guests come down from Japan. This year we held qualifiers mainly for Super Street Fighter IV: AE2012 and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 since they would be our main games. These qualifiers were held all over the world to insure we had plenty of worldwide representation, not just at the venue, but on the stream as people tuned in to watch their fellow countrymen do battle against the best the world had to offer.

Shadowloo Showdown 2012 Statistics

Speaking of the stream, we didn’t reach the 20,000 concurrent viewers we were aiming for, but we came very close with 19,500+ people watching the finals on Sunday. We’ve already put in plans for next years event which will have the main events played at a great time for not just Australian viewers, but all those watching around the world. Either way, I believe this is one of the highest viewer counts for an Australian gaming stream, so we are very proud of that achievement.

“Look at the numbers!”

Something else we’re proud of is the fact that our main TwitchTV channel was the first Australian channel to reach over one million views (Correct me if I’m wrong). Now thanks to this years Shadowloo Showdown, we are also the first to pass the two million views mark. Over the weekend of SS2k12, we had over 1.25 million hits on our main channel and almost 250,000 on our secondary channel. So thank you to everyone who made this possible.

Korean superstar; TH|Poongko

To the viewers; the stream team did the best with the tools they were given. While we were told we would have 3mb upload speed with the venue’s connection, it turned out to be only 0.8mb after we ran a few tests on it. Stream 2 was running off the 4G wireless connection which was doing a far better job, so on the final day, we scrapped the venue connection in favor of the 4G.
So we would like to apologize about the quality not being up to par with what people expect it to be these days, but sadly Australia is still very far behind when it comes to internet speeds.

Justin Wong and Shadowloofox team up for SS2k12 commentary.

Now, I’ll move on to actual numbers at the event. It was a solid turnout, slightly more than that of last year. We were concerned that this years attendance might be a lot less since fighters seem to be on the decline at the moment. But with close to 400 competitors and hundreds more just there to spectate, we’re pleasantly surprised with the turnout. Sure it’s not a huge number compared to some other tournaments around the world, but when you compare the population numbers, it’s a huge success for us.

How will next year look?.. Well that depends on how fighting games are performing in general next year. The word is that we might see a new Street Fighter Alpha or Darkstalkers game by next year. There are even talks of Street Fighter V, though I don’t expect to see that until late 2013, or somewhere around March 2014. Even without any new titles, I feel some of the titles around at the moment are solid enough to hold their own for many years to come.

Shadowloo Showdown Moments

More importantly, let’s look at the event itself. AMAZING.

I have never seen so many top matches across so many fighting game titles in my life. To be honest, I am not the biggest fan of 3D fighters, but I was really enjoying the action from the 3D tournaments at this year’s SS. Especially seeing M. Lizard from South Korea put on a show with his Aeon, watching Tokido from Japan play Soul Calibur V and play it well. Who even knew he played SCV? I’m sure some did, but I didn’t, and this was the first time I got to see him play the game. I expect to see big things from Tokido and M. Lizard at future SCV events.

Same with Razer’s Fuudo who placed 3rd in the SCV tournament, but that wasn’t a huge surprise considering Fuudo was a former Virtua Fighter champion. Speaking of which, Fuudo looks far too strong in the VF5: Final Showdown tournament, and will go into EVO as one of the favourites. Thanks again to SEGA Australia for helping us get our hands on the yet-to-be-released VF5: FS. It means a lot to the VF fans and Australian gamers in general.

Razer|Fuudo makes his Shadowloo Showdown debut

Seeing MMT and the other Australian boys hold it down for us in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was another highlight. This however, would have not been possible had Namco Bandai Australia not stepped up and ordered a TTT2 cabinet for us all the way from the Namco offices in Japan. Much love and respect for that.

The GamerBee vs Justin Wong runback in Super SFIV: AE2012 was such a memorable match to watch and I have no doubt people will be talking about that for a long time. Not to mention that one round between BanBaBan’s Cammy and Neurosis’ Dictator in the losers’ final of the Razer

Super Street Fighter IV: AE2012 tournament. Nothing happens in the first 60 seconds or so, then…. BAM! Ten seconds of pure mayhem. You have to see this match to believe it.

Melbourne Marvel player Antman knocking out DJHuoshen (USA) in the AVerMedia X GameCom Ultimate Marvel vs Cacpom 3 tournament was huge, especially considering the last time DJ was down here, he annihilated us. It just goes to show how much Antman has improved over the last few months. Not only that, but Antman also knocked out Japan’s Tokido who took out the tournament last year for Marvel. The whole venue exploded with screams and cheers and then those screams and cheers turned into the loudest chant I have heard in a long time; “ANTMAN! ANTMAN! ANTMAN!” Easily one of the best moments from this year’s SS. It wasn’t just Antman though, any time any Australian took out an international guest, the room went off. This is our country, we must defend this house!

Note: subtitles to be added later.

The downside of having so many amazing players is that so many matches will go unrecorded. For example, Evil Geniuses player from Japan, Momochi, who finished 2nd in last year’s event for AE2012, was knocked out by an Australian player: Phero. This is huge, as Phero is not very well-known outside of Australia and to take out one of the best players in the world in Momochi and deny him a spot in the top 8 was insane and sadly not many people got to see that happen. Most people only found out through word of mouth and the reaction was the same… “Are you ****ing serious!?…”

EG|Momochi and EG|Chocoblanka make a return to Shadowloo Showdown

So many other great matches also went under the radar, but this is why people need to be at the event, not watching from home. So if you could have been here, and I know many of you in Melbourne definitely could have, then you should have been here side by side with us, cheering on your friends as they take on an almost impossible task. I hope to see you all there next event!

Team Qanba X eLive want to see you at Shadowloo Showdown 2013!

We’ve been uploading some of the footage from the event for those who couldn’t make it or missed the stream. Some of the footage is HD direct capture game footage, but this lacks the stream commentary. The other footage is straight from the TwitchTV archive, so while the video quality is not as clear, it does include the commentary. Check them all out at our Youtube Channel; TheShadowloo

The greatest community in the world

While all the above is well and good, I need to start thanking some very important members of the community, without whom this event would have not happened. Firstly to my brothers Sol and Kode aka the world-famous Bosslogic who basically came up with the idea to hold Shadowloo Showdown (I came up with the name). Sol was hard at work organizing players and qualifiers to the best he can despite the language barrier, and I think he did an amazing job. In the meantime we had Kode do his magic in promoting the event. Kode created fantastic posters not just for our event, but for the qualifiers as well. Not to mention that he stepped it up to a whole ‘nother level when it came to trailers for this year’s event.

Huge shoutout to Chris Ho who was my right hand man throughout the whole event. I have no idea what we would have done had Chris not been there every step of the way. Chris has cemented himself as one of the official Shadowcrew and we look forward to working together in the future. Shadowloofox is another community member who stepped up this year in more ways than one. But, what is Shadowloo without team Bugs! Bugsimus and Rossco stepped it up for us in the stream department. Even with the lack of high speed internet, they still managed to put on a great show. Huge thanks to Mr. Offcast as well, who flew all the way from California to take care of the secondary stream and to work together with Team Bugs to form a formidable team; Team OffBugs. Thanks also go out to Igor and a few others who helped out behind the stream desk all weekend. Not the most fun job, but someone had to do it, so I thank you guys for accepting the responsibility.

Another job at these events that people despise is the “Rego desk job”. No one wants to sit at a desk all day with all these amazing games and gamers around, so thank you to AoE, GodlyEffect, CornySpark, Loki, Spoony, Muttons, Amcam, April, Pyro and whoever else that took shifts at the desk. No one really wanted to do it on Sunday, so it was left to me… I just wish we someone had told me that the laptop on the desk could have been used to watch the stream!

The other big job was running pools for each tournament. With so many games at this year’s SS and so many pools, we needed a lot of people to step up and step up they did. Thanks again to all of you who helped out. It’s not easy getting people to volunteer; we appreciate it and hope to reward you all in the near future.

Loki, I have to give a special shoutout to you my friend. You single-handedly took care of organizing the pools so people would not have their games clash as well as seeding top players so that they would not run into each other too early. Not the easiest job in the world and while we had a few minor issues, overall I think you did one of the best jobs possible, so well done on that. Not to mention the fact that you also updated each bracket online all weekend for people to stay up-to-date.

To all the drivers who helped me move players from place to place not just all weekend, but all week, I am sorry and I thank you. There was no chance in hell I was going to be able to do it alone, so Chris, Pen, Carnage, ToXY, Pyro, Shadowloofox and everyone else who helped out, thank you. It wasn’t easy, especially during peak hours and it definitely wasn’t cheap. I plan to look after all of you later down the road for putting your hand up for this job.

And just a huge thank you in general to all the community members who helped out. Without you, Shadowloo Showdown 2012 would have not been what it was. I have said it many times; this community is one of the best gaming communities in the world. You are more than a community, you guys and girls are family. It was a pleasure working with you all and I hope we can do so again in the near future for whatever Shadowloo has planned.

The greatest sponsors in the world

The other piece of the Shadowloo pie that needs to be thanked is our great sponsors. Since so many of them have returned from last year’s SS, it looks like we’ve been doing something right. At the same time, we had many new sponsors join us for this year’s SS. We tried a few new things this year sponsorship wise, such as the in-game sponsorship. Razer took on the Super Street Fighter IV: AE2012 tournament, while AVerMedia and GameCom joined forces to sponsor Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and King of Fighters XIII. We’re hoping all three of those companies have been pleased with the result and that we can get them on board for future events.

We’re also hoping other sponsors of ours have seen the outcome and will consider a similar sponsorship, especially for some of the smaller games. Either way, we would like to thank you all for making Shadowloo Showdown 2012 possible, it has been a pleasure working with you all and we hope it’s been the same for you. We try to make the process as smooth as possible and are always happy to take feedback on board, so please let us know if there is something we could have or should have done differently and we’ll look into it for future events.

Now, just a quick roll call so you know who these amazing supporters of Shadowloo are! Mad Catz || BenQ Australia || Razer || AVerMedia || GameCom || THQ Australia || SEGA Australia || HORI || QanBa || GameSpot AU || Couchwarriors || TEC Gaming || Focus Attack || Arcade WorX || TwitchTV || GFTG || Namco Bandai Australia || Madman Entertainment || Gaming Gear AU

Please support them just like how they have been supporting us! Lastly, we want to say thank you to all the media outlets who got the word out about Shadowloo Showdown 2012; Our official media sponsor, GameSpot AU. IGN Australia, Kotaku, The Verge, ABC, Rocket Chainsaw, Console Domination, Shoryuken, Eventhubs, iPlaywinner, HitCombo, Basgrospoing, EvilGeniuses, OzHadou and everyone else, it really means a lot to us. Now, I shall leave you with this great video created by the very talented; Corey Hague. Also, keep an eye out for the official recap video thanks to Bosslogic in the next week or two.